[Kaapo]

Happened to spot this quote from José Damiani in World Bridge News 1/2011:

Quote

By the next WBF Team Championships
in the Netherlands in October,
2011, development will be completed
for an automated recording system
with web cam and an electronic reader
that will allow every match to be
broadcast on the Internet

Any guesses how this automated recording system will be used and whether it really is in operation in Veldhoven? How will this impact vugraph coverage on BBO?

[nickf]

Kaapo, on 2011-June-07, 15:29, said:

Happened to spot this quote from José Damiani in World Bridge News 1/2011:


Any guesses how this automated recording system will be used and whether it really is in operation in Veldhoven? How will this impact vugraph coverage on BBO?

I think the cards will have an embedded chip and players will be asked to play them in such a way that they are electronically read perhaps from a reader above - I think similar technology to how a car tag is read when you drive through toll gates. Presumably it's trivial to convert this data to a .lin file that BBO or other online services can broadcast.

nickf
sydney

[mrdct]

nickf, on 2011-June-07, 15:44, said:

I think the cards will have an embedded chip and players will be asked to play them in such a way that they are electronically read perhaps from a reader above - I think similar technology to how a car tag is read when you drive through toll gates. Presumably it's trivial to convert this data to a .lin file that BBO or other online services can broadcast.

nickf
sydney

I'm looking forward to seeing how that technology actually works and hope it isn't going to be anything obtrusive that would interfere with the flow of the game.

I wonder how much more expensive the playing cards with the ID chips in them are. Are you selling those yet Nick?

[nickf]

They will almost certainly come from Damiani's family business (how convenient). Heard nothing yet.

nickf
sydney

[JanM]

From the Supplemental Conditions of Contest for Veldhoven:

The WBF may decide to introduce and adopt a new electronic system of reading and registering the bidding and play during the Championships, in which case the regulations for use of this system will be published in due course.

[mrdct]

JanM, on 2011-July-11, 22:44, said:

From the Supplemental Conditions of Contest for Veldhoven:

The WBF may decide to introduce and adopt a new electronic system of reading and registering the bidding and play during the Championships, in which case the regulations for use of this system will be published in due course.

I wonder if any work has been done in integrating this new electronic recording system with BBO. I expect that it would be quite a big task and would take a fair bit of testing to iron any bugs outs.

[cbergek]

I've heard about a machine that both deals and reads the cards, and is meant to be placed on each table. When the deal is over you just put the cards in the machine (without shuffling them) and it reads the order all cards were played. Then it redeals the cards for the next deal. I haven't seen one of those machines in operation, but there is a nice clip on their website (http://bridge4people.com/. Also, I haven't heard if this is the solution they're planning to use, but if it's available I guess it would work. The only problem could be revokes, and perhaps claims, apart from getting all the players to put their cards in nicely...

[mrdct]

A prototype of the system to be used at the this year's Bermuda Bowl was used yesterday in the World Youth Congress as reported in Bulletin #4 at page 10.

It seems that the system is based around optical character recognition and not embedded chips in the playing cards which makes a lot of sense to me as the latter would no doubt be prohibitively expensive.

[barmar]

Wow, that seems really cool.

Although it seems like a lot of work just because we don't want to use computers to play major tourneys.

[nige1]

mrdct, on 2011-August-24, 15:49, said:

A prototype of the system to be used at the this year's Bermuda Bowl was used yesterday in the World Youth Congress as reported in Bulletin #4 at page 10. It seems that the system is based around optical character recognition and not embedded chips in the playing cards which makes a lot of sense to me as the latter would no doubt be prohibitively expensive.

Great idea Accurate records of bidding an play and fewer disputes about breaks in tempo
Perhaps, for ordinary f2f tournaments, a similar result might be implemented, with tablets or mobile phones, instead of cameras, as suggested in another BBF thread

[mgoetze]

It looks like the dummy mat will have trouble with 7+ card suits.

There was a system like this (with cameras and optical recognition) for Go, which was tested at the European Go Congress 2004 (if I recall correctly). It was scrapped because Go players have this tendency to lean over the board, and all the cameras got to see was hair.